Ep 183: Mental Health and Sexuality
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SARAH: Hey what’s up hello. Welcome to Sounds Fake But Okay, a podcast where an aroace girl (I’m Sarah. That’s me.)
KAYLA:… and a demi-straight girl (that’s me, Kayla)
SARAH: talk about all things to do with love, relationships, sexuality, and pretty much anything else that we just don’t understand.
KAYLA: On today’s episode: mental health and sexuality.
ALL: — Sounds fake, but okay.
SARAH: Welcome back to the pod!
KAYLA: M’ac and cheese.
SARAH: Yep, good, good job.
KAYLA: I was going to say something else but then Sarah took a mac and cheese break for a second so.
SARAH: I did.
KAYLA: Felt right, felt correct.
SARAH: Sometimes you have to take a mac and cheese break that no one’s going to listen to cause you’re going to cut it out of the pod but just so you know there was a brief mac and cheese break.
KAYLA: So whenever you guys wonder, oh I want to hear the bloopers, just so you know, all it is is Sarah cutting out a bunch of likes and ums, Sarah cutting out when we talk about things in our personal life that don’t concern you, and when Sarah stops to eat.
SARAH: Yeah, so, jot that down.
KAYLA: Yeah.
SARAH: Wonderful. Do we have any housekeeping?
KAYLA: Um. I don’t think so.
SARAH: We’re back. But at what cost.
KAYLA: Back and somehow even after taking a break—
SARAH: Somehow worse.
KAYLA: More tired than ever?
SARAH: Somehow worse.
KAYLA: It wasn’t supposed to be that way.
SARAH: But you know, can’t take every week off.
KAYLA: Here we are.
SARAH: Oh dear god. Okay. Kayla, what are we talking about this week?
KAYLA: This week, we’re going to be talking about some mental illness, some sexuality, how the two intersect, yes.
SARAH: Mm hmm.
KAYLA: We did do a long time ago in maybe the first 20 episodes—
SARAH: Is that the one with Jamie when we were all so exhausted because we did it at eight o’clock in the morning the Monday after regionals?
KAYLA: Yes. I don’t know if I recently listened to that or read the transcript. But it was not great. But I think that one was mental health and relationships and how being mentally ill impacts dating and that sort of thing. So this one is adjacent to that, hopefully better.
SARAH: No offense to Jamie.
KAYLA: It’s not our guest Jamie’s fault that that episode wasn’t good, it was that it was incredibly early and we were running on very little sleep.
SARAH: So was she, to be frank.
KAYLA: Yes, we all were not having a good time.
SARAH: Love you Jamie.
KAYLA: So let’s go. Sarah, I think we should start by listing our mental illnesses.
SARAH: (Laughing) We love that.
KAYLA: Would you like to share?
SARAH: I would love to. A bitch is depressed, a bitch apparently has anxiety.
KAYLA: Apparently.
SARAH: And a bitch also has ADHD, which is not a mental illness but it is a mental—
KAYLA: Situation.
SARAH: Condition? It impacts my mental illness quite a bit.
KAYLA: Yes. I am also depressed and also have anxiety, which reminds me, haven’t taken my meds yet today so hold on.
SARAH: Take them right now, live on the podcast.
KAYLA: Can you hear them?
SARAH: ASMR.
KAYLA: ASMR, my pill thing shaking.
SARAH: I went to the pharmacy to pick up my meds today.
KAYLA: I don’t know if you got the gulp. If it’ll pick up the gulp.
SARAH: I heard something.
KAYLA: Anyway, I just took my meds.
SARAH: Good. Clearly.
KAYLA: Anyway, we are mentally ill and also—
SARAH: Have sexualities.
KAYLA: And we also have sexualities.
SARAH: As most people do.
KAYLA: Yeah.
SARAH: Most adults do.
KAYLA: Anyway I wanted to talk about this because my mental illness impacted my coming out and realizing I was demisexual a lot and the more I thought about it, the more I realized that for a specifically aromanticism and asexuaity, that could be the case maybe even for other queer people. But also I’m not otherwise queer as far as I know currently. But maybe sometimes I wonder. Anyway.
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SARAH: That’s a problem to unpack another day.
KAYLA: Can I tell you Sarah, wait I don’t know if I want to keep this in but the last several months, I’ve been very infatuated with the fact of going to Hooter’s and it’s because this girl on TikTok I follow works at Hooter’s and talks about working at Hooter’s and it’s very interesting. She’s queer but also you have to serve to men mostly. Anyway the reason I wanted to go, she was talking about how they serve couples and it’s a man and a woman—
SARAH: Didn’t you already go? Or you wanted to go?
KAYLA: I wanted to go because the girl said that when a guy and a girl comes in they just don’t talk to the guy usually to make sure the girl doesn’t get pissed. Anyway so I wanted to go to see if that happened to us. But the more I think about it, the more I’m like it’s a little weird that I’m infatuated with going to Hooter’s.
SARAH: Maybe she just wanna see the titties.
KAYLA: Anyway.
SARAH: Do you want to leave that in or do we want to make it a clean edit?
KAYLA: Eh, we can leave it in it’s fine.
SARAH: Okay.
KAYLA: Listen, sometimes you wonder things and it’s okay.
SARAH: Me, always.
KAYLA: I feel like I’ve talked, as this was unfolding we were doing the podcast, so bits and pieces of it made it into the podcast. But I kind of talk about how my anxiety especially impacted my sexuality and talk about more broadly kind of other things I’ve noticed as I’ve thought about more, that I’ve noticed with other people who are even just straight.
SARAH: Let’s dive in.
KAYLA: Are you ready?
SARAH: I’m ready I’ve never been more ready.
KAYLA: Do you have anything?
SARAH: Not really. I kind of came to terms with my sexuality before I really had dealt with my my mental illness at all. So it’s kind of one came before the other which is kind of the opposite of your experience. So I don’t have a ton to contribute here but I’m here to party.
KAYLA: Okay. When we get into discussion later I feel like I have some questions for you which you probably won’t be able to answer seeing as yours came in that order. But we can do some speculation together.
SARAH: Sure.
KAYLA: Okay, so. Where to begin?
SARAH: At the beginning.
KAYLA: At the beginning. Well the beginning is that I started having anxiety in high school, but it was just about grades and school and stuff so that really had nothing to do with my sexuality because also I didn’t think about my sexuality at all until college which seems relatively, I feel like that happens for a lot of people. Anyway, once I got to college, I started having a lot of anxiety about friends first of all because going to college is very stressful when you’re worried about making friends. I think that’s also very normal. I was also very anxious about dating because I didn’t have a lot of dating experience, I dated one guy in high school, but nothing juicy ever happened.
SARAH: Juicy? Probably cause he was a Mormon.
KAYLA: And at the time I was not yet post-Catholic. I was in the middle of Catholicism.
SARAH: Still Catholic.
KAYLA: Still Catholic. So yeah when I got to college I was like, okay yeah things are going to probably happen and I do want them to happen but I am afraid because what is sex supposed to be like and when are you supposed to have it and what is going on?
SARAH: I can’t relate at all to wanting things to happen but I can relate to being afraid.
KAYLA: That makes sense. Yeah that tracks for where we are.
SARAH: Constant fear.
KAYLA: See I feel like the earliest, and I don’t actually remember this happening but one of our friends reminded me that this happened and I still don’t have clear memories of it. Probably blocked it out. I think my first dating-induced anxiety was this guy that was in our theater org that I would flirt with I guess. We at one point were making out and I got stressed that he might want to have sex with me so I ran away and vomited. I don’t remember this but it tracks.
SARAH: It sounds vaguely familiar.
KAYLA: It also sounds vaguely familiar because that exact scenario did happen later with other men.
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SARAH: So it’s not like it’s out of character.
KAYLA: Not out of character at all. The weird thing was that that happened freshman year. I started dating my first college boyfriend the summer after freshman year and there really wasn’t much anxiety there because he was very chill with waiting and doing whatever I wanted, which was nice.
SARAH: Shouts out.
KAYLA: Shouts out, if you’ve listened from the very beginning, that’s the person I was dating when we first started the podcast. But at the time I also wasn’t thinking I was demisexual because Sarah wasn’t out and I didn’t know what it was yet. Or if I did I wasn’t really thinking about it. So in my mind, the reason I was stressed about it is because I was a virgin and didn’t know what I was doing and stressed about doing it right, those are very natural—
SARAH: Capital V, Virgin.
KAYLA: Virgin even though it’s not a real thing. But I was. So I was just attributing my stress to the normal thing that anyone of any any sexuality would go through upon having sex for the first time of like, I want to do it right, and whatever hurts, that kind of thing.
SARAH: Maybe some people don’t have these concerns but those people are definitely in the minority. People who are just like, “yeah let’s go I’m ready. I have no concerns whatsoever.”
KAYLA: I have never met anyone who wasn’t worried about their first time being awkward or painful or correct because society makes it seem like it has to be amazing and it doesn’t so people get a lot of stress.
SARAH: I don’t talk to people about this really. In your experience when you say you don’t know anyone, are all or most of those people who were socialized as women. Is it different for people who are socialized as men? I’m sure some are nervous but I imagine most men aren’t thinking, oh no what if it hurts?
KAYLA: The hurting not so much. I think people socialize has men have different concerns. Like, will I last long enough and that kind of thing. I do have male friends, they are socialized as men and identify as men, who were nervous. I happen to have more female friends and female socialized friends so that probably skews my data.
SARAH: And I don’t ask my friends about this so.
KAYLA: That’s fair.
SARAH: I don’t have any data.
KAYLA: To be fair most of my friends happened to not be hugely sexual or have a huge sexual past, so.
SARAH: I also feel like of the people I might be close enough to discuss these things with, it was already it had already happened by the time I knew them or it still has yet to happen so there just hasn’t been a discussion yet if there is to be one.
KAYLA: I remember us talking a little bit about when it happened. I can’t remember if you asked me—
SARAH: You’re really the only person I’ve talked to about this though.
KAYLA: I remember you asking me like, do you think you would do it again and things like that. Anyway.
SARAH: I didn’t know what to ask a person in that scenario.
KAYLA: No but see I think that was a very good question because it was not a question I was expecting. And I don’t think that’s a question that people usually ask but I think it’s a very good question to ask.
SARAH: I don’t remember asking it or at least I didn’t remember asking it until I saw that Kayla had written it in the book and I was like oh, I guess I did say that didn’t I?
KAYLA: I do think it’s a very good question because people just assume you’re supposed to like it so once you have it once I guess even if I don’t like it I just keep having to do it which isn’t true. You asking “did you like it? Would you do it again?” allowed me to be like, okay if I didn’t like it, I don’t have to do it. So it was a good question.
SARAH: I feel like sometimes that question is asked when it comes to—for some reason the term my brain is ascribing to it is extreme sex which is not—
KAYLA: Extreme sex.
SARAH: But when it comes to stuff that’s the less standard, this would get a person pregant sex, maybe it’s asked more in that context, but if it’s traditional regular old heterosexual sex—
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KAYLA: That’s more of a thing with kinks or more of a “oh did you like this thing that you experimented with” not just the standard base level sex. Anyway.
SARAH: Stereotypical.
KAYLA: Yes. That’s what I attributed a lot of anxiety towards and that’s probably where my anxiety was coming from because I didn’t know to think about another reason why I might not have been reason. Candidly me and that first college boyfriend didn’t have sex for the first six months of our relationship because a. I wasn’t ready at first and b. There were a lot of medical issues going on also during that time for me.
SARAH: Other concerns happening
KAYLA: Yeah but because of that medical stuff and also being a virgin I was like, oh those are the reasons I didn’t think about, well maybe you weren’t sexually attracted to him at first, you know what I mean?
SARAH: Mm hmm. And I feel like looking back on it, I don’t know if this was your experience but I think at the time, I wasn’t thinking about whether or not you were having sex. I wasn’t like, “wow I really hope Kayla starts having sex soon.”
KAYLA: Wow I wonder when she’s doing it.
SARAH: We share a room, wow. But you know, looking back on it now, I feel like most people, the average person at least would have at least wanted to initiate something, whether they were comfortable with it once it started happening is another question, but at least been like, oh here’s a thing that I’m interested in. And that just wasn’t your experience for a while at least.
KAYLA: Well not at first.
SARAH: For a little bit.
KAYLA: Not for the full six months because for the back half of that it was like medical shit happening.
SARAH: Right.
KAYLA: But yeah you’re right those first, I don’t remember how long it took me to start wanting to do anything sexual. I think it was, I don’t know, months, some number of months.
SARAH: Months while being exclusive too.
KAYLA: I don’t know, I just didn’t know to think about it. Midway through that relationship, Sarah came out and I started thinking about it more and realized I might be demi and I decided not to think about it because we were dating and it didn’t matter. Anyway after we broke up and I started seeing people again, it became a major issue for my anxiety especially because I couldn’t be like oh the reason I don’t want to have sex with this person is because I have never had sex before or because I’ve had these medical issues. There was no legitimate reason in my mind I understood as to why that happening. Except for anxiety. I was having a ton of anxiety around it. Especially several times I was seeing this guy, we were hanging out doing stuff and I would have to leave to go throw up and have an anxiety attack.
SARAH: Romantic.
KAYLA: Yeah just super sexy. Because I thought oh my god, if he tries to make a move or something what if I’m not ready, what am I going to do, I freaked out because anxiety causes a cycle of thoughts and whatever.
SARAH: And it wasn’t even that you didn’t trust him. It was the prospect of even being faced with that situation was so anxiety inducing, right? It wasn’t that I felt that he was dangerous, or that I thought he was going to pressure me into anything, he was a very sweet boy. Nothing even ever happened. He never even tried anything. It was just like the sheer thought of if he tries something, what do I do? Because I knew I didn’t want to do anything.
SARAH: How do I explain myself?
KAYLA: Yeah and that’s such an awkward situation to be like no goodbye.
SARAH: But also I still like you but also no and I can’t really explain why I’m saying no because I don’t fully understand why I’m saying no.
KAYLA: Yes and he also had more dating experience than me, I never asked him like “how often do you have sex” but from my perspective, seemed like someone who was much more okay with casual sex than me so in my mind I was like, he probably has sex all the time and had a ton of casual relationships so he’s going to think I’m weird for being a prude or something so yeah it was a whole weird thing, I think college hookup college and society and being raised as a woman, a lot was going into it. I was not thinking about it at the time.
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SARAH: A dangerous little soup of things.
KAYLA: A dangerous little soup! But yeah it made it hard because I was for a long time like, maybe an anxiety trigger for me is sex. Maybe sex just makes me anxious and that’s just how it is. And I was also just thinking maybe I am demisexual, but I was then—to this then sometimes I have thoughts about this, none of us are a 100% okay with our sexuality all the time. But I was like, am I actually demisexual or am I just anxious about sex or I have anxiety that’s not doing well right now. And I’m just taking on this identity that’s not mine. So having both of those identities at once, being a mentally ill person I was really struggly going with that balance when in reality they are incredibly intertwined because maybe sex is an anxiety inducing thing but that’s because I’m demisexual, you know what I mean? Not like the other way around or whatever.
SARAH: We try to separate out these things and put them in their own little boxes but the reality is, inside of us they’re a gross tangle of mess and there’s nothing you can do about that.
KAYLA: So I don’t know, I feel like the more I kind of thought about it, I was like, there is no way that that is just an experience that I had because if you are, especially after you’re someone who’s sex-repulsed and you don’t realize your asexual and perhaps you do also have mental illness or you don’t and this is a random thing comes up and youre like why am I feeling this way? And if you don’t realize asexuality is an option, you just assume that there’s something wrong with you and that gets you to a whole other thing about asexuality being medicalized and things like that is, you just don’t realize that it can be both sometimes you know.
SARAH: People who aren’t both informed but do know they have certain mental illnesses, may look at this and say oh this must be another mental illness because it’s something that’s wrong or different from other people so therefore it must be something to medicate or cure which it sucks that so many people think that way but you know that’s why we’re trying to inform people. This kind of gets into kind of the greater half, that was my introduction of my personal experience. But the greater topic I think that interests me the more I’ve thought about this is that when you’re a depressed and anxious person sometimes that does come back and influence how you experience sex drive or your want to have close platonic or romantic relationships with people. And I feel like that gets into a whole other side of it. Like when people ask us, oh I’ve had this trauma, am I allowed to identify as aro or ace. Or, there was a lot of antidepressants that a side effect is vastly lower in your libido or your sex drive and I feel like that just gets into a whole other interesting can of worms like, you know.
SARAH: It’s all just a messy tangle. I think part of the reason that it’s been helpful to me to come to terms with my sexuality before really doing anything about my mental health is I was quite sure I was ace by the time before I took any medication. And so there are like, this could decrease your sex drive, I’m like that’s fine, don’t care. And then I was doing that for a while. Recently when she wanted to put me on an anxiety medication in addition to that, she was like, oh this might counteract, it might bring back your sex drive as if that’s a reason for me to take that medication. I don’t—it doesn’t matter.
KAYLA: You literally don’t give a shit.
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SARAH: I don’t care. But for someone who’s questioning, those changes could hinder your process in a certain way.
KAYLA: I’ve definitely seen videos of people talking about, “I just got off my antidepressant and I don’t think I’m ace anymore. I’ve been identifying as ace for years and now I’m really not sure because I got off this antidepressant and suddenly I have a sex drive again.” And as we know, sex drive not the same as sexual attraction but can be very closely linked for people. So there seems to be a lot of confusion there.
SARAH: Yeah and it also just comes from people not being informed on the difference between attraction and sex drive. Even within the aspec community. It’s not something that I was not fully aware of for a while, you know after I learned about asexuality. It’s hard that it’s so complicated. Complicatedness is good because it’s full of lots of nuance and gives space for all sorts of people but also it’s hard.
KAYLA: Yeah and that’s even something that I’ve been thinking about recently is sex drive versus sexual attraction because I personally have been very depressed for several months.
SARAH: A minute.
KAYLA: A minute. But just to give you all a lot of intimate details about my life, I got on antidepressants when I was 16 so I don’t remember what my sex drive was like when I was 16.
SARAH: Also when you’re 16 from what I hear from the allos, there are things happening that may impact—I can’t relate, I don’t know. Didn’t really have that experience.
KAYLA: I don’t really remember what puberty was going on or my sexual feelings were at that time, so I personally don’t know if that was impacted for me. Cause I just don’t remember if that was impacted before but I’ve never known myself to have my sex drive impacted by meds or my mental illness. But lately, I’ve had no interest in anything because I’m very depressed. But it does kind of make you think because if I have no want to have sex, if sex drive is I want to have sex in general, and sexual attraction is I want to have sex with that person in particular. But if you don’t have the drive to have sex at all, then you’re not often going to be thinking, I want to have sex with that person in particular. So that’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about recently. Like, what?
SARAH: Yeah I guess I never thought of it that way. That’s a good point.
KAYLA: Yeah. It makes it even harder to parse out of of course you’re not going to feel attracted to one person in particular if you don’t feel like having sex at all.
SARAH: Yeah and you may have—my brain just stopped working—you may have some sort of other attraction to that person, romantic or aesthetic or otherwise. But if you don’t have any drive to begin with, then maybe you won’t view them as someone that you are sexually attracted even if in other circumstances you might find that you are.
KAYLA: Yeah, and for people who are maybe depressed and don’t feel like even getting out of bed let alone having sex, cause that’s a lot. Listen y’all.
SARAH: Sex often happens in bed but it seems like a lot of effort though.
KAYLA: It’s a lot of energy, so speaking from someone who when I’m depressed I want to do literally nothing, it’s a lot. So anyway, if you’re someone who is like depressed or you have some sort of anxiety around sex or your meds impact that, it would make sense why you’re like, I guess I have no sexual attraction. And maybe you don’t. Who knows?
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SARAH: That has me really thinking now. I’d be really interested to hear about any aspec people who are bipolar because for people who are bipolar, often you have the manic states and then you have the states that resemble depression a little bit more so I would just be really curious to see if anyone struggled with that in their questioning because sometimes it would be all out or sometimes it would be if in both states they would have no interest. That would be very interesting to me.
KAYLA: That is super interesting. Yeah it has me thinking about when you are—especially in media, when you have models in society of this is what attraction looks like, this is what a “correct” relationship looks like, it’s usually depicted with neurotypical people. So when you are a. Not neurotypical, first of all when you’re not neurotypical in anyway, your relationships and the way you interact with people are going to be different in some way, full stop.
SARAH: Would you say that they’re atypical? A-typical and a-sexual? Kayla didn’t like that?
KAYLA: i’ll wait. Now I don’t even know what I was saying.
SARAH: When you’re not neurotypical.
KAYLA: When you’re neurodivergent in some way or you have something like ADHD or even some sort of disability, the way that you interact and form relationships with people is often, at least slightly different from the conventional model. So you have that, just base, but also you start feeling like, maybe I’m further from that and this kind of gets back to what we were talking in our episode with Liam about disability, is this caused by my disability, is this what goes along with whatever I have or is this a completely separate thing, or in my case, do they interact in some fluid way that I’m not able to put them in their own boxes?
SARAH: You can’t parse it out. I don’t know, it’s all complicated, it’s like this is stuff that sure people can do studies, people can give anecdotal events and talk about it but we’re never going to have a blatant answer to this in our lifetimes for sure.
KAYLA: Yeah, complicated. And it’s frustrating because people want answers of either like, why am I like this or like I said earlier, the amount of people we had ask us or seeing generally on the internet like, I have this other thing going on, can I identify as aspec if I feel like this other thing might be causing it or related to it? Is that okay? It’s like, do whatever the fuck you want dude. We talk all the time about how sexuality is something you’re born with. I feel like it’s a thing of like, sexuality or romantic romantic attraction is not something you’re born with but something you can’t change consciously.
SARAH: It’s kind of like your personality. Your personality is your personality. You can try and make changes to it outwardly. The way you are innately is not going to change. But it’s not necessarily written in your DNA that this person is not going to be super outgoing.
KAYLA: Yes like we always say, sexuality is fluid. Maybe at certain points in your life you were identifying as bisexual but now you’re like “I’m actually not attracted to this one gender, I think I’m a lesbian now or I’m gay.” Even if sexuality is fluid, you don’t get to choose when it’s fluid or why that change happens.
SARAH: You can’t be like on my 25th birthday I think I’m going to become pan. That’s not how that works.
KAYLA: You can decide when you want to switch your label and come out that way or to recognize it for yourself.
SARAH: But the way you feel is not like that.
KAYLA: Whether that’s something that occurred because of nothing else or occurred because of something that happened in your life, that doesn’t make it not the truth, you know?
SARAH: Yeah.
KAYLA: Just because you might think, “maybe I was identifying as asexual at this time and maybe it was because of my meds” that doesn’t mean it isn’t true but also because I’ve also seen this a lot lately, of queer people saying they went through a “cringe” asexual phase. Just because you found out it was a phase and not your “forever identity” does not mean it’s a phase for other people.
SARAH: Also doesn’t mean it’s cringe.
KAYLA: Yeah I really don’t enjoy. I’ve seen it a lot lately I’m sorry.
SARAH: That would be like someone saying, “oh I was in my cringe bisexual phase, I thought I was bi.” If the cringe is “oh I thought I was attracted to men” I get it. But.
KAYLA: I can understand the cringe of looking back and by not understanding what was going on. That I get because that is cringey to look back on.
SARAH: But the orientation is not cringe.
KAYLA: Yeah it’s, I don’t know. Whether you feel like there was something else impacting your life whether you identify a certain way that doesn’t mean that it is that way. I think a lot of people obviously there is no rhyme or reason. There’s nothing you can point in your life and say that’s why I identify as ace, that’s why I identify as aro. This happened and now I turned gay. Those are things that can contribute but, I don’t know it’s difficult. Weird contradictions still.
SARAH: That also implies there is a base heterosexual state and not that a person is a blank slate. I mean the only way we can really prove this is if someone could prove the multiverse theory is real and you just visited a bunch of different versions of yourself.
KAYLA: And then you pinpoint what’s different.
SARAH: And be like, “so do you all identify this way? What percentage of you identify this way? Why?” The thing with the multiverse is that there are infinite. And that’s overwhelming from a social science perspective. That seems hard.
KAYLA: Um, yes.
SARAH: Okay.
KAYLA: That would probably be impossible.
KAYLA: Anyway.
SARAH: If anyone knows a multiverse version of themselves, let us know.
KAYLA: Honestly please. Anyway, I just think this is very interesting and we didn’t even begin to get into because we don’t have the authority to do so, your mental state and gender. I assume though I’ve never questioned my gender so I don’t know, that it would be the same thing of like, do I have anxiety or is this gender dysphoria that I’m feeling right now? You know.
SARAH: Yeah. And we also surely can’t get into people who have dissociative identity disorder and how different alters experience different things differently. I don’t know the first thing about that.
KAYLA: Which I do find very interesting because I know we have a few people in our discord server with DID and I don’t recall that all of the alters are the same sexuality so it is, yeah I don’t know, it’s super interesting and I just want to hear other people’s experiences because I know for me I really struggled with coming to terms with my sexuality and how my anxiety played into that and that was also a very painful part of my coming to terms with my demisexuality was that I happened to be very anxious about the whole situation.
SARAH: It was impacting your relationships and what you viewed as your future.
KAYLA: And it’s also anytime you realize that something is different than what you thought at all about yourself or otherwise. It’s stressful to find out you were wrong about yourself. So yeah, I don’t know. I just think it’s interesting and I’d like to hear other people’s thoughts about if they went through a similar thing or if they feel like their mental illnesses are really intertwined with their sexuality, if they struggled to come out as a certain sexuality because they were afraid it was really just their mental illness. I don’t know. I want to hear. I meant to ask you this but I think your answer is no. Since you realized that you were mentally ill after you realized you were aroace, was there a point even after when you were like, “oh I just found out I’m depressed maybe I’m not aroace?” You know?
(40:00)
SARAH: I never had that experience. And I think it’s partially just because as has been pointed out to be I’m a very indecisive person but once I commit to something I commit to something. So there was never any point where I was like, I don’t know if I’m asexual yet but I’m just going to call myself asexual. I didn’t embrace it until I was sure about it. I think for me because that’s the way I am, once I commit I commit. I’m very lucky that I don’t give a fuck what other people say once I’ve made that commitment. But yeah I think for me it’s just been and maybe it’s easier because I’m both aro and ace and because you know even the questioning that I have had, my conclusion is, does it matter? And I know for some people when they question, their conclusion isn’t it doesn’t matter. And so that makes it easier for me to be like, okay even if I am questioning something I can just let it go. I don’t get stuck up on it. Which definitely has made this experience easier for me and I wish it were that simple for everyone but it’s not. I wish no one were mentally ill.
KAYLA: That would be nice. Actually I don’t remember if I said this on the podcast, maybe I said this to my co-worker but I was telling her that rather than no one be mentally ill, I’d rather everyone be mentally ill.
SARAH: Yeah cause I wouldn’t want to take away someone’s mental illness if they feel like it’s a part of them. People talk about being autistic and you know—
KAYLA: That gets into the weird thing of saying people need to be cured.
SARAH: Then it’s like, okay, calm down about eugenics? But yeah, I mean, I don’t know. I guess it’s kind of like if you could change your sexuality would you? If you could get rid of your mental illness, would you? Those answers aren’t necessarily the same because they’re different.
KAYLA: Even thinking about it though, obviously mentally ill really sucks and it makes certain things really hard but, well first of all I hate change with a burning passion but thinking about not being mentally ill anymore does scare me because it’s kind of like, it’s a comfort to almost have that part of yourself you know, that’s how things are.
SARAH: Part of it for me too if it was just like suddenly you’re not depressed anymore you just don’t have to deal with that. Then I would almost feel like I would be facing, okay you don’t have an excuse.
KAYLA: That is also hard.
SARAH: At this point it’s like, I’m trying my best. At least I hope I’m trying my best. I’m doing my best. If I was like, I know I’m definitively not mentally ill—
KAYLA: No excuse.
SARAH: There’s no excuse and I feel like I would start expecting more out of myself which is not necessarily a healthy reaction.
KAYLA: Yeah I know a lot of people when they start antidepressants they get worried about, “being depressed is part of who I am and part of my personality and I’m going to lose part of myself if I go on meds and that kind of thing.”
SARAH: And different people make different choices regarding that. Some people are like, you know when I take meds it makes me so not myself I would rather not take meds whereas for some people the meds really really help them, so.
(45:00)
KAYLA: Yup.
SARAH: I don’t know if I would be able to not have ADHD. I don’t know who I would be without ADHD.
KAYLA: You would be very different. I really don’t know.
SARAH: I feel like with my depression and anxiety I have a better grasp on who I would be because I didn’t have depression and anxiety to the extent I do now have as a kid. I didn’t have diagnosable.
KAYLA: At least for me, my depression and anxiety are pretty episodic where it’s like sometimes I’ll be totally fine and there’ll be a couple of weeks where I’m really unwell but from the impression I get at least of how your ADHD works, it’s never not there.
SARAH: Yeah. I feel like with depression and anxiety they’ve gotten worse as I’ve gotten older and they’ve impacted my life more. And with ADHD, although I didn’t know about it until I was older, looking back on it, it’s always been there.
KAYLA: Yeah.
SARAH: So, I don’t know.
KAYLA: I remember when we were freshmen and you were like “maybe I have ADHD” and I was like uh huh.
SARAH: Yeah but I can’t imagine myself not ace. It’s a part of you and that’s the way it be.
KAYLA: Yeah.
SARAH: Do we have anything else to add?
KAYLA: I don’t think so.
SARAH: It’s all complicated.
KAYLA: It’s all a big soup.
SARAH: It’s all a big soup. All a big person soup. And I hope you’re able to tailor your soup so that it’s tasty, but it doesn’t have to be tasty at every moment you know?
KAYLA: No.
SARAH: Is that cannibalism? If the soup is in you?
KAYLA: I don’t want to think about it.
SARAH: Kayla what’s our poll for this week?
KAYLA: I don’t know. Are you soup?
SARAH: Are you soup. Well Soup is soup. Soup from our Discord is soup.
KAYLA: We do have one person among us that is definitively soup.
SARAH: I mean we could say like do you feel that your mental health and your sexuality interact? Do you feel that one had a marked impact on the other? Mental health being a broad term because everyone has mental health regardless of whether they have mental illness.
KAYLA: Yes. I’ll figure out how to word it, let’s not think about it yet.
SARAH: Kayla what is your beef and your juice for your soup this week?
KAYLA: My beef and my juice for my soup is—my juice is that for the long weekend I went home, I went wedding dress shopping with my sister, she’s getting married and did a bunch of stuff with my family.
SARAH: It’s a pretty dress.
KAYLA: It is a pretty dress, I cried about it. And I saw a bunch of my friends from college and also my friends from the grew.
SARAH: I saw that post of the grew and I was like, you told me Perold has seen Kayla and I haven’t?
KAYLA: Yeah, yes. Me and Perry spent the whole day together. It was very beautiful.
SARAH: Perold please share.
KAYLA: But yeah it was very reinvigorating and it felt like things were a little bit more normal because all of my friends from grew are vaccinated and it felt like a back to normal hang out and it was just so nice.
SARAH: I attended an outdoor birthday gathering over the weekend and we were all at least mostly vaccinated and we were maskless, wow this is what it’s like? I’m tired. Whew.
KAYLA: Yeah it was, I’m still recovering. But I did have to fly hungover. So I guess that’s one of my beeves. Is I had to fly hungover. My other beef is I’m just very tired from traveling and being socially active. My other juice is I went to a metaphysical shop, crystals and such, the store people were very nice, I had a great time.
SARAH: Good. My beef is that it is staffing season which means work is hell. Upfront started this week and that just means my work is hell and that’s all you need to know. And that didn’t really happen last year because beginning of pandemic and because I didn’t have as many bosses, but now I’m suffering.
KAYLA: Sarah called me and we were about to start recording and then she had to leave and go do a bunch of work. It was very chaotic.
SARAH: My boss was like, I need to do roll calls to these 7 people and I was like, bye Kayla.
KAYLA: And we can’t record later this week because my family even though I just saw them is now coming here. And Sarah has jury duty.
SARAH: I haven’t had to show up for jury duty yet but I know I’ll have to. Anyway my juice is new BTS track coming out. It’ll be out by the time this pod’s out. I’m sure it’s a bop, a summer time bop. It’s called Butter and I like butter. The dairy product. I think it’s going to be great that’s all. Cool. You can tell us about your beef, your juice your thoughts on Butter, your mental health, on our social media @soundsfakepod. We also have a Patreon, patreon.com/soundsfakepod. First time with the second round of changes. I think this one is going to stick.
KAYLA: For now.
SARAH: Until we simply get too popular.
KAYLA: Which is what happened the last time we made changes.
SARAH: We have a new $2 patron, it’s Alessandra Scott. Thank you Alessandra!
KAYLA: Welcome!
SARAH: Welcome to the party. We have this week’s $5 patrons, we have Emily Collins, Bookmarvel, Jamie Jack, Jessica Shea and Ria Faustino.
KAYLA: Five for five.
SARAH: $5 footlong. And we have a new $5 patron it’s Elliana Currie. Yay.
KAYLA: Welcome. Thank you.
SARAH: Our $10 patrons, oh this is where the change is. Our $10 who get to promote things this week are Arcnes who would like to promote the Trevor Project, Benjamin Ybarra who would like to tabletop games, and anonymous who would like to promote Halloween. Our other $10 patrons are Sarah McCoy, aunt Jeannie—my aunt Jeannie, she’s everyone’s aunt Cass, Doug Rice, H. Valdis, Purple Chickadee, Barefoot Backpacker, The Steve, Ari K, Mattie, Derek and Carissa, Aaron, Khadir, Potater, Sarah Kujawa, David Jay, The Stubby Tech, Simona Sajmon, and Rosie Costello. Our $15 patrons are Nathaniel White - NathanielJWhiteDesigns.com, my mom Julie who would like to promote free mom hugs, Sara Jones who is @eternalloli everywhere, Andy A who would like to promote being in unions and IWW, Martin Chiesel who would like to promote his podcast, Everyone’s Special and No One is, Leila, who would like to promote love is love also applying to aro people, Shrubbery who would like to promote the Planet Earth, Dia Chappell who would like to promote twitch.tv/MelodyDia, Sherronda J Brown, who would like to promote erasing her debt. Maggie Capalbo who would like to promote Minnie, Leia, and Loki, oh yeah that’s their dogs. Kayla you should have written their dogs.
KAYLA: I thought you would just know.
SARAH: I read what I see Kayla. Andrew Hillum would like to promote their loved ones getting vaccinations, and Dragonfly who would also like to promote eliminating Sherronda’s debt. Our $20 patron is Sarah T who would like to promote long walks outside. Not just Sherronda’s debt but all aspecs because as we know aspecs can’t owe money. Thanks for listening, tune in not next Sunday but the following Sunday for more of us in your ears.
KAYLA: And until then take good care of your cows.